AMD today announced the new AMD Embedded G-Series System-on-Chip (SOC) platform, a single-chip solution based on the AMD next-generation "Jaguar" CPU architecture and AMD Radeon 8000 Series graphics. The new AMD Embedded G-Series SOC platform further signifies a strategic push to focus on high-growth markets outside the PC industry, with an emphasis on embedded systems. The announcement was made at this year's DESIGN West expo.

Embedded systems are increasingly driving intelligence into new areas of our lives, from smart TVs and set-top boxes to interactive digital signage and informational kiosks. This supports greater productivity and connectivity and is expected to be a strong driver for Surround Computing, an area of substantial growth in the computing industry. Among the forces that are enabling this next-generation computing era are single-chip, SOC solutions that offer smaller size, higher performance and more energy-efficient processors.

The AMD Embedded G-Series SOC platform sets the new bar for SOC design, offering up to 113 percent improved CPU performance compared to the prior generation AMD Embedded G-Series APU, and up to a 125 percent advantage compared to the Intel Atom when running multiple industry-standard compute intensive benchmarks. For embedded applications, the new platform also includes support for DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.2x and OpenCL 1.22 that enables parallel processing and high-performance graphics processing, yielding up to a 20 percent graphics improvement over the previous AMD Embedded G-Series APU and greater than 5x advantage over Intel Atom when running multiple industry-standard graphics-intensive benchmarks.

"We have built a treasure trove of industry-leading IP in processors, graphics and multimedia along with the infrastructure to combine these building blocks into unsurpassed embedded SOC solutions," said Arun Iyengar, vice president and general manager, AMD Embedded Solutions. "With a 33 percent smaller footprint, low power consumption and exceptional performance, the new AMD Embedded G-Series SOC sets the bar for content-rich multimedia and traditional workload processing that is ideal for a broad variety of embedded applications."

The AMD Embedded G-Series SOC combines dedicated resources that enable exceptional performance with shared resources to help reduce power consumption and die space, and provides developers the flexibility to leverage the same board design and software stack for a variety of applications due to the scalability of the new SOC design. The discrete-class graphics integrated into the AMD Embedded G-Series SOC power applications that previously required a separate graphics processor, while the addition of new CPU architecture for the Embedded G-Series SOC platform allows deeply embedded or "headless" systems, which are used in environments without a screen, monitor or input device and do not require a graphics solution.

"As the Internet of Things permeates every aspect of our life from work to home and everything where in between, devices require high performance, I/O connectivity and energy efficiency in smaller packages," said Colin Barnden, principal analyst, Semicast Research. "With this new AMD SOC design, the AMD Embedded G-Series platform offers the perfect mix of high performance, a small footprint, low energy use and full I/O integration to enable smaller form-factor embedded designs, cool and efficient operation, and simplified build requirements. AMD has leapfrogged the competition by combining the power of an x86 CPU and the performance of AMD Radeon graphics with the I/O interconnect all on a single die."

The AMD Embedded G-Series SOC supports Windows Embedded 8 and Linux, and is designed for myriad embedded applications including industrial control and automation, digital signage, electronic gaming systems, SMB storage, IP-TV, medical and network appliances, set-top boxes and more. AMD will ship the AMD G-Series SOC platform with general availability in the second quarter of 2013, followed by a comprehensive ecosystem of industry-leading embedded solution providers supporting and/or announcing market-ready products powered by the AMD Embedded G-Series SOC.

Ideal platform for low-power and high-performance designs
● For Industrial Control and Automation: low-power and heterogeneous computing advantage enabled by the integrated GPU deliver more than 150 GFLOPS of compute performance over and above the compute capability of the x86 CPU cores6
● For Digital Signage: eye-catching, high-definition multimedia content delivery connected through a variety of display technologies (DP, HDMI, VGA, LVDS)
● For Electronic Gaming Machines: dedicated hardware acceleration engines for video decode (UVD) and encode (VCE) as well as digital content management (SAMU)
● For SMB storage: high-performance SOC in a small form factor with a myriad of integrated USB and SATA I/O enables a fanless design, reducing system cost

Yup AMD has a winner with these SoCs, IMO. They have a broad market application so it should generate a nice chunk of change for AMD along with all the other goodies they have coming like Rickland, Kaveri and Steamroller to mention just a few.

Unless TSMC is producing these, this migh be the first 28nm node from GloFo?

AMD has already said that Jaguar is basically the bobcat core with another stage in the pipeline. Jaguar is not like bulldozer and I just looked through the link you posted and it says nothing about modules. I think you need to know what you're reading before you start spreading false information.

Jaguar does not use modules, it has real cores, as in the FPU is not shared. The pipeline for a BD/PD based chip is also twice as long as Jaguar.

i doubt AMD will go to ARM because their x86 based low power SoCs are already going to have similar wattage and cost the same as any ARM based SoC (ie 50-100$)

why would they ditch the x86 advantages just to enter the android market? that would make for a very foolish move as there are already well established companies in that market now.

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Because at the moment, they apparently cannot scale lower than 9Watts with their x86 cores, even if they've only got two out of four activated. Using ARM cores instead of x86 while keeping the rest the same will probably allow them to go even lower than 9Watts, which is essential for things like tablets and phones, which cannot support a 9Watt TDP.

I like how the press release never mentions ARM. I'm still skeptical since their source doesn't mention ARM. Has AMD even bought the rights to the ARM architecture yet?

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engadget said:

The answer, according to AMD's Arun Iyengar, is that AMD is paving the way for an ARM-designed CPU as part of this embedded series. Whereas the X-branded x86 chips will serve power envelopes of 9W all the way up to 25W, future A-branded versions could bring power consumption right down to less than 3W:

"Ultimately, we're going to have x86 and ARM in our product portfolio."

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Pretty sure when an AMD rep gives specifics of '< 3w and ARM cores' it's very much figured out and on the roadmap.

Because at the moment, they apparently cannot scale lower than 9Watts with their x86 cores, even if they've only got two out of four activated. Using ARM cores instead of x86 while keeping the rest the same will probably allow them to go even lower than 9Watts, which is essential for things like tablets and phones, which cannot support a 9Watt TDP.

None of this gives me any evidence that they're moving forward with this though. Everything I've read is speculation, nothing concrete.

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That is indeed a good point. However, they did announce that they were going for a more modular design, and they already have a licence on ARM cores. While the move would certainly seem to be possible, and make sense, we indeed don't have any proof supporting it yet.